


can't sleep tonight (as long as I still)

by Trojie



Series: Bandom Bingo 2017 [7]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Aftercare, Angst, Bullets Era, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Touching, no actual incest but very incesty in tone, offscreen BDSM, offscreen Gerard Way/OMC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 21:21:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10907703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: Gerard is bad at asking for what he wants, or taking what he needs, or remembering what he took.





	can't sleep tonight (as long as I still)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uglowian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uglowian/gifts).



> For Uglowian, who totally has my back with all these tragic angsty shenanigans and piled up similes <3
> 
> For the square 'hurt/comfort' on my Bandom Bingo card. Title from Gerard Way's song _Brother_.
> 
> YMMV on exactly how incesty this is. I tried to tag so that no-one would come into this and get a shock, but if you have a suggestion for a tweak, let me know!

This is how much of a cliche Gerard's life is - it's raining and it's literally four am when he knocks on Frank and Mikey's apartment door. Three minutes past four. He knows this because he shakily and reflexively checked his watch first, as if there was any time of day or night that would have made him go home instead.

Four minutes past four ticks over, and he starts to feel a gnawing in his belly, but then he finally, finally hears footsteps.

Mikey opens the door in a pair of pyjama bottoms Gerard knows for a fact he's owned since he was fourteen, and a worn-comfy-looking Misfits shirt that's probably Frank's. He looks Gerard up and down, and his mouth thins a little, but he takes Gerard by the wrist and pulls him inside. His fingers are so warm on the thin, clammy-wet skin of Gerard's arm, and it takes Gerard a moment to remember why he's so cold. Right. Rain. Cold. Walking … however many blocks he walked after he got out of the cab.

'You're soaked through,' Mikey says, shutting the door behind Gerard and pulling the denim jacket off him. Gerard's hair is dripping water down his face, he can feel it now that he's out of the wind. He shivers. Mikey looks him in the eyes, hard. 'What did you take?'

'I just - can I sleep on your couch?' Gerard asks, trying to iron the wobble out of his voice and failing. All the strength in his vocal cords is gone, like he's done ten takes in a recording booth and screamed himself out. 

'What did -'

'Nothing.' Something. 'I mean, not much.' Only half a pill, because he didn't recognise it. 'I dunno.' The truth. 'Please, Mikes. I just need to crash.' Also the truth. Whatever it was he took he barely got a buzz off it. That's not why he's here. 

Mikey's mouth twists like a paperclip but he shrugs. 'I'll find you some pants,' he says. 'Take that wet shit off, okay, you're gonna catch your fucking death.'

'Yes Mom,' says Gerard, on autopilot. Mikey rolls his eyes and disappears into his room. 

Gerard means to take his shirt off, he does, but his hands stop at the hem, pulling but not going anywhere. 

'Oh for - Frank's not here, he's at Jamia's,' Mikey says, reappearing. Gerard realises that the direction he was zoning out in contains Frank's bedroom door, two inches open and dark inside. 'You're lucky, he'd be all over you with fucking hot tea and blankets by now, you know what he's like.'

Gerard does know what Frank's like. Hot tea and blankets sound fucking amazing. 

But he doesn't get hot tea and blankets, because the half of the Frank-and-Mikey show that knows about hospitality is out at his girlfriend's place. Instead, Gerard gets Mikey dragging the shirt over his head and leaving him half-naked and blinking. 'Dude. Get your pants. I'm not getting them for you.' Mikey's voice is pissy, but his eyes are sad. Gerard wishes he didn't make his brother sad this much. He takes the balled-up pyjama pants Mikey offers him. 'They're not, like, clean-clean, but they're not gross,' Mikey says, and Gerard realises Mikey's wearing a different pair now to the ones he was wearing when he opened the door, because those ones are the ones Gerard's holding. 'They're the cleanest ones I had,' he admits.

'I can dress myself, Mikey, jeez,' says Gerard, slightly too late, off-kilter. There's silence where Mikey would normally say something about how he has no actual proof that's true. 

Gerard looks up. Mikey's staring at him like he's never seen his slightly too pudgy belly before. Gerard clutches Mikey's pants to him to try and hide, but it's too late. He told the guy anywhere his shirt would cover was fine. He didn't think … 'I -' he starts, meeting Mikey's eyes, but he doesn't have anything else to go with it. 

'I know,' says Mikey softly. He does know. Gerard knows he knows. Which is why he came here and not his place, or their parents'. 'I'll get you a blanket.'

Gerard does manage to fumble out of his heavy, soaking-wet jeans and into Mikey's PJ bottoms before Mikey can come back and see the rest of the mess, at least. He takes the blanket, and the pillow Mikey brings him too, which is still a little warm and smells of hairspray and sweat, and manages to get himself horizontal on the couch despite the fact that he feels kind of like he's watching himself act out a play of himself crashing on his brother's couch. 

Mikey kind of pets his hair for a moment, and Gerard can't help leaning into it. And then he's gone, two steps across the shitty carpet of this tiny apartment and he vanishes into his room. Gerard lies on the couch and watches the way the shadows and lights puddle through the doorway as Mikey shuffles around in there, and feels bad for interrupting his sleep. Mikey never seems to get enough sleep, and here's Gerard turning up yet again to fucking ruin yet another night. 

Eventually the dull orange clicks to darkness, then slowly grey-blue fuzzy edges grow as Gerard's eyes get used to only having what few photons are leaking through Mikey's shitty blinds from the streetlights outside. 

He tries to sleep, he really does. But it's so fucking quiet. They got back off two weeks in a van three days ago. Gerard hasn't slept right since - his mattress is shitty but he swears it's too soft now, it fucks his back up, and he can't … it's too loud in his head. He can't sleep if he's fucking yelling at himself the whole time. At least in the van, wedged between boxes and gig-bags and seat-backs, he had other people breathing, other people snoring, the weird little high-pitched noises Ray makes when he's really deeply asleep, to tune into. Or he was drunk. He was drunk kind of a lot. And high. That helped. That's why he went out tonight in the first place.

In a very technical way, he's probably high now, but he doesn't feel high, he feels … distant. And too quiet. And he aches. He doesn't even realise he's standing in Mikey's doorway until Mikey sits up in the dark and flops his bedclothes sideways. 'C'mon,' he says, like he was waiting for this, or something - like he isn't surprised, like he wasn't asleep, like he knew this would happen. 

'Sorry, I'm sorry,' says Gerard, backing away. 'I just -'

'Get in, asshole,' Mikey says softly, and Gerard wants to step over that threshold so badly that he finds himself backpedalling simply because of how hard he fucking wants it. 'I'm not kidding,' says Mikey, and suddenly he's right there, fingers tight around Gerard's wrist again, pulling.

Gerard latches onto him like his touch is magnetic - a second ago he was repelling but now some polarity has flipped and Gerard can't … he has to be held or he's gonna fly apart. When Mikey wraps his arms around Gerard and starts to really tug at him, though, Gerard can't help wincing. 

'Gee?'

Gerard shakes his head, face buried in Mikey's shoulder, and keeps stumbling backwards in what he hopes is the vague direction of the bed. But Mikey lets go of him. 

'You're hurt,' he says flatly. 

'It's nothing.'

'It's never nothing.'

'It's a couple of fucking bruises, Mikes, I've had worse on stage.' Gerard starts to step back again, ignores the way his thigh muscles catch and ping, because he knew, he _knew_ he should have just stayed on the couch. He can't fucking control himself. That's always his problem. 

'Get in the fucking bed, Gerard,' says Mikey. 'Stop … just stop. Okay?' He scrubs one hand over his face and cards his hair out of his eyes. 'Please.'

Gerard can't take that look. He crawls under the covers to escape it. 

It's not a big bed. It's probably technically a twin but it's one of those ones you inherit third-hand from a relative the first time you move out and which is never quite a standard size. The sheets Mikey's got on it right now are baggy and worn, pilled down the middle where the shape of Mikey-asleep is imprinted on the shitty mattress. Mikey's very clearly trying not to touch Gerard when he gets in after him, but they roll together almost immediately, Gerard curled into as small a ball as he can manage and Mikey behind him, trying to keep his distance. 

Gerard's rational brain figures Mikey's trying not to like, poke any of his bruises. Gerard's lizard brain is pretty sure the attempt at keeping distance is because Mikey's disgusted with him. He curls up even tighter and wishes like fucking burning for a hand on him, for a touch, a cuddle. 

Then again, wanting a hand on him is how he got into this fucking mess in the first place, only he thought he meant it differently at the beginning of the night. Maybe he did. Or maybe he was too fucked up to read his own signals, whatever. All he knows is that the underlying craving's still there, and he still can't parse what it is he _wants_ but he's still too fucking weak to fight it. 

Gerard's wiggling shifts him on the mattress, and Mikey's palm lands on Gerard's hip, trying to fend them apart before they end up, like, spooning on accident. Gerard hisses through his teeth in shock. Mother _fuck_ , that one's worse than he -

'The fuck, Gee? Seriously.' Mikey's sitting up, leaning over him to get the bedside light.

Gerard squeezes his eyes shut when the light blooms burning into his fucking retinas. He hugs his arms to his chest and just hopes to God Mikey isn't going to make a thing out of this. They really are just fucking bruises, okay, and like. Whatever. It's minor, it's all minor. Even the - 

'Did you get fucking _beaten_?' Mikey asks softly, and Gerard tries to shake his head but the pillow is in the way like the universe is trying to stop him lying to his brother, so he … he hesitates, and nods. 

Mikey's hand runs down the dip of Gerard's waist, only ever really a curve like this when he's on his side, and every mark he glances off makes Gerard shiver in ways he should never shiver in his brother's bed. 

He reaches over Gerard's head again and fumbles in his bedside cabinet for something. Gerard hears things clunk and rattle, and then Mikey evidently finds what he was looking for, because he settles back down again. 

The thing about Mikey and … situations like this is, he doesn't ask stupid questions like 'why?' Gerard can fucking _feel_ them floating in the air, but Mikey never asks, and Gerard's grateful, because he doesn't know why. He's never known why he sometimes just … just wants something sharp to cut through all this fog he's wrapped in.

Mikey's fingers ghost over the welt on Gerard's hip. They're slick and cold. Gerard flinches and can't help the high noise he makes in the back of his throat. He also can't help the sick thrill that goes through his gut. 

'Chill,' says Mikey. 'It's arnica. Just lay still, I'm gonna - shit, Gee, how far down do -' He's been easing at the waistband of the pyjamas as he talks, but he freezes. The elastic of the waist is old and worn, but still tight enough to make Gerard whimper when it drops right over the middle of another welt, lower down. 

Gerard knows full well how far down the marks go. Too far for Mikey to follow. So he grits his teeth and doesn't try and change where the elastic is cutting him. Hopefully he's hunched over enough that the shadow of his body will disguise things. Gerard watches himself breathe carefully through his mouth, second, third, fourth-guesses every movement he makes as Mikey gently, so fucking gently, massages the cold cream into his skin. 

He curves around a little too far, though, from the small of Gerard's back, over his hips, down the swell of his belly and almost to the drawstring on the pyjama pants, and Gerard started to zone out to the shallow, warm ache of touches to bruises, but cream in cuts _stings_ , and he jerks hard away from Mikey's hands. 

Before he knows what's happening Mikey's pinning him to the bed. 'You're bleeding,' he says, and Gerard can't look him in the eyes.

'Let me go,' he says, squirming. It hurts, it fucking hurts and he thought those had scabbed over but apparently not, apparently he's just opening himself up again. 'They're nothing, seriously.'

'Nothing doesn't make you bleed, Gerard.'

There's hardly any light in here even with the lamp and its cheap shitty bulb, but Gerard doesn't need light to see how Mikey's frowning, and he tries to pull away harder but Mikey won't let him go and it hurts and - 'Fuck,' Mikey says softly. 'Don't - I'm sorry.'

His grip loosens and Gerard curls away from him because he desperately wants to curl _into_ him. He's not crying, or at least, he doesn't think he is, but it wouldn't take much to make him. 

Mikey sighs and settles back down, clicks the light off. His arm comes around Gerard's shoulder loosely, far away from the sore places, far away from where Gerard wants it. 'Just … try and sleep, okay,' he says softly into the space between them. 'It'll all look better in the morning.'

Gerard really fucking doubts it, but whatever. He forces his breathing to slow and tries to force his body to stop shivering, and eventually Mikey's arm sags against him and his hand slips off Gerard's body down into the void between them. Gerard waits til he's sure, til he's really really sure, both that Mikey's asleep and that he can move without fucking tripping over his own feet, and then he slinks out back to the couch. 

Mikey deserves to sleep and Gerard's too much of a fucking mess, figuratively and physically, to deserve to be anywhere near him. Blood and sweat aren't the worst things Gerard's got smeared over his skin. He wraps himself up in a ball around the pillow Mikey brought out, a poor fucking substitute for the teddy bear he had as a kid and a worse substitute for what he really wants, and stares at the dull glow from the blinds, and the wall, and counts his breaths trying to wait out the most fucking anticlimactic comedown from the most disappointing technicality of a high he's ever had. 

He doesn't realise Mikey's there until there's a hand on his forehead and Mikey's kneeling down next to him and trying to shh him. His chest hurts, and he suddenly feels like breathing has been hard for a while, he doesn't know how long. 

'Do we need to have the talk about kink?' Mikey says, sliding onto the couch and pulling Gerard's head onto his lap. 'Because I'm not fucking stupid Gerard, but I'm starting to think you are.'

There's a twitch, a tiny sliver of humour behind what he's saying, he's trying to make this easy, but … Gerard can't even fucking joke about it, not yet. He just shakes his head and clutches the pillow. Mikey cards his fingers through Gerard's hair. 'You need a shower.'

Gerard makes a noise into Mikey's thigh and tightens his fingertip cliff-top desperate clutch on the pillowcase. 'No,' he mumbles. 

'Okay, well, c'mon, at least we can sleep in my room -' Mikey starts to try and get up, to pull Gerard off the couch. Gerard tries to make himself as heavy as possible.

 _'No.'_ It's like he's seven again and the floor is lava, only worse. Leaving the couch, this cocoon of safety where Mikey's touching him, anchoring him, seems like the worst idea in the world. 

'Fine,' says Mikey, sliding from sitting to lying, folding up around him like origami and trapping him against the back. 'Whatever. Just remember if you wake up with a pretzel for a spine, I offered you a proper bed.'

Gerard squirms, and Mikey hooks his arm around Gerard's waist. 'Fuckin' _sleep_ , Gee.'

'No. I mean. I will, but. You should go to bed,' Gerard says. He pushes back a little against Mikey, like maybe he can tip him off the edge of the sofa and that might make him leave. 'Mikes. Go back to bed.'

Mikey makes a sound Gerard's never heard before, and refuses to be moved.

'We can fucking dance around this for the next four hours, or you can accept that it's happening,' he growls into the nape of Gerard's neck. His arm tightens, and it puts sweet, too-sweet, pressure on Gerard's aches and pains. 'You won't tell me what you took, and you fuckin' went out and got yourself beaten all to shit, so fuck you, Gerard. I don't trust you right now, and I gotta watch you til I know you're not gonna go do something even more stupid. Go the fuck to sleep.'

He moves his hands, like he's gonna give Gerard a backrub, the way they used to when they were insomniac teenagers. Gerard puts his face down into the pillow and tries to do as he's told. He does try. But Mikey plainly doesn't, and Gerard can't find even the softest edge of sleep with Mikey behind him, gently tracing his hardened fingertips over Gerard's hurts. 

'I wanted it,' he croaks, after a while, mostly into the pillowcase. 'I know it looks bad. But it isn't. And I asked for it.'

There's a very long silence after that, the kind that means Mikey's very carefully assembling his next sentence and it's either going to cut right to the heart of Gerard or it's gonna be eighty percent swearwords, or both.

'Wanted it and asked for it are different,' is what Mikey eventually says. His lips are very soft against the back of Gerard's neck, where he has his face pillowed. Gerard can feel every flutter of his eyelashes. 'Which one was it, Gee?'

'Both,' says Gerard defiantly. 

Mikey shakes his head a little. 'So you asked for it, then. Okay. Then why are you on my fucking sofa instead of in someone else's bed?'

Gerard shrugs, like it's no big deal and it doesn't matter, and his throat locks up with words he can't say.

'Did you safeword out?'

Gerard swallows hard. 'Yes,' he says. Which is not a hundred percent true but if the question is _did you stop the scene when you realised you were in over your fucking head?_ then it's accurate. 'He was fine about it.'

'And he let you leave.'

'What, was he supposed to _not_ let me leave?' Gerard asks sardonically. 

He _feels_ Mikey's jaw tighten against the skin that's taut over the knobbly top of his spine. 'He was supposed to take better fucking care of you afterwards if he was gonna mess you up like this,' Mikey says. 'More fucking importantly, Gerard, you were supposed to let him. The fuck would you trust someone to beat your ass if you wouldn't trust them to clean you up after?'

'Didn't need it.' Gerard doesn't say, _because those are separate, because they're different, because I got you and we can't - because how can those things be the same person?_

'Bull fucking shit.' Mikey's scowling, Gerard can hear it in his tone as well as feeling his facial expressions like shadows against his skin. 'How do you think he feels?' he asks a minute later, in a much quieter voice. 'Huh? How do you think it fucking feels when someone does that to you?'

'I - '

'It hurts,' Mikey whispers. 'Someone walking out on you like you're the bad guy, when you tried to give them what they wanted.'

Gerard flinches. Mikey tightens his hold again, and Gerard's mouth opens on a whine he can't stop. 

'You asked for this,' Mikey reminds him. 'Did you even let him make you feel good? Or did you fucking get wrecked and then run?'

'Mikes, _please_ -'

'Why did you come here, Gerard? If you didn't need looking after, why didn't you go home?' He's fucking eroding Gerard from the inside out. He sounds beat, tired enough to be honest, and it hurts worse than the bruises all over the cradle of Gerard's hips and the rounds of his ass, to hear Mikey raw like that. Gerard clutches at the pillow and tries to find the words to explain himself, and can't.

So they both lie there in the dark. At least they're breathing. 

'Do you want me to leave you alone?' Mikey asks after a while. Now he sounds like a little brother again, unsure. 'Am I. Is this too much?'

Gerard tries to dredge up some bravado. 'Thought you were gonna babysit me?'

Mikey lets out a deep sigh, and goes to pull away. Gerard feels him start to move and panics, because no, no no, he's not - he lied, he's not okay. He scrambles his way around til he's on his other side, facing Mikey, still wedged tight between him and the sofa back and with his chin tucked tight down against his own sternum, so that he's breathing hard into Mikey's collarbones, clutching at his ribs with fingers that still feel just that little bit tingly-numb. 

'Don't go,' he says, and feels pathetic. 

Mikey's hands fall back on his body. 'You needed it,' he says softly. 'That's - It's okay to need it. It's just. You need this too. You can't just get taken apart and not get put back together again, Gee.'

Gerard squirrels his face harder into Mikey's shoulder, curls himself tighter inwards. Mikey strokes over the soreness of his hip and doesn't flinch when Gerard's breath catches in his throat at the phantom flare of pain. 

'You can't keep making people do this to you and not let us fucking _help_ you,' he says. His other hand fumbles at Gerard's neck, then his jaw, til he can pull Gerard's head up. In the dark and without his glasses on, his eyes are huge and dark.

 _Us_ echoes in Gerard's head. Us. Not them. Not for the first time, Gerard wonders what the fuck he did to deserve having someone like Mikey, always on his side. 

Gerard's trembling, overwhelmed, and Mikey very carefully, very slowly, presses down on Gerard's hip. Not hard, not meanly, just enough to say he knows exactly what he's doing. He eases back off when Gerard's throat cracks on a tiny, high note. 

'Let me help you, Gee,' he breathes. 'Let me actually make you feel better.' His fingers catch at the edge of Gerard's waistband, but he doesn't go any further. Gerard nods jerkily against his chest, forces himself to breathe. In for a count of five, hold it, shaky, for … three, just about, and then out for what's supposed to be five but it's hard to breathe out slow so it's more like four and a bit. He remembers a lot of the vocal exercises he learned at school, it's just they're hard to do; he's out of practice, and he smokes a lot more than he used to now he's old enough to actually buy the things without having to sneak around. But he tries. He blew his voice out a few times early on and it fucking hurts and it sucks to ruin a show because you can't hit notes. Gerard hates letting the others down. So he's been trying to pick the exercises back up, when he remembers. 

In for five. Hold for something closer to four this time, and he can feel his heartrate evening out. Out for four too, but a slower four. Mikey soothes his fingers over Gerard's bruises, makes them feel warm, a high note on a thin string, vibrato that eases Gerard somewhere in his head that he knows he can go but hardly ever reaches. 

In for five again, and Mikey gently pulls himself free. Gerard melts into the warm spot he leaves. The light flicks on and makes him blink. There's a wall clock above the couch. It says 6.20, and Gerard kind of hates himself. 'Roll over,' Mikey says quietly, tugging at Gerard's shoulder until he's lying fully on his belly. 'I gotta look.'

Gerard starts to say something - probably 'it's not that bad' again, _again_ , but Mikey just hooks his fingers into the waistband of the pyjamas and pulls them down over Gerard's ass. Gerard's floating, and pain and shame, and fear, they're … somewhere left of him. He'll deal with them later. 

Mikey hisses through his teeth. 'Fuck, Gee. You're not gonna sit right for a week.' He touches softly again, places he shouldn't, places not for him, but Gerard doesn't care. Mikey traces lines Gerard can't see but can feel, that he asked for and didn't want, a burning map to … somewhere Gerard doesn't know how to get on his own. 

He doesn't even really know what Mikey's seeing. He didn't stop to look - he just got out of that bed and shrugged off the attempts to … he didn't want that touch, okay, he didn't want that care, he didn't want - he never knows what he wants, he changes his mind halfway through everything he does, he's all start and all stop and no fucking follow-through. All he knew was he got something, and he needed something else. 

It's not like the guy didn't try to stop him, to help, and it's not like Gerard didn't get what he asked for. It's just that he always asks for the wrong things. 

Mikey so seldom needs him to ask, that's the thing. 

'Okay,' says Mikey, like he's saying it to himself. 'It's mostly bruising. That's okay. Fucking stupid, but it's okay.' His fingers light down on Gerard here and there, and it stings, this time, everywhere he touches. His voice hardens just a tiny bit, just a crackling skin over the top, when he says, 'You ask him to make you bleed?'

Gerard shakes his head, and then says. 'But. No, I just. He kept saying, like this? Like this? And I -'

'Asked for more,' Mikey finishes. 'Jesus, Gerard.'

There's rustling, and then something damp and warm caresses the curve of Gerard's ass. He shudders into it, and realises it's a washcloth, warm and soft. Mikey doesn't scrub, he's gentler with Gerard than Gerard deserves, when he turned up here so late it's early, all useless and weak, couldn't even clean up the mess he got himself into first before getting it all over his brother -

'Shhh,' says Mikey, and Gerard realises he's making noises into the pillow. Pathetic. 'Hey, c'mon. I got you. You're okay.'

He throws the washcloth aside - Gerard hears it hit something with a wet thud - and pulls Gerard's PJs back up, pulls away. Gerard winces, and it isn't because his ass hurts. It's because he's cold - he's cold and he's sore, and it's not the kind of sore that has an edge like a buzzsaw, that makes you want more. Not any more. Now it's the kind of sore that makes you want it to stop. 

The light clicks off. Mikey climbs back onto the couch and wraps Gerard back up in his arms. 

Gerard shivers, burrows into the dark safe space between the couch and Mikey's long, lean body. It smells of unwashed dude and home. Mikey's warm against Gerard's hurts, easing them. 'I'm so fucking sorry,' Gerard says into the couch cushions, and almost hopes he's too quiet to be heard.

'It's okay,' Mikey says into Gerard's ear, low and warm. His arms are tight around Gerard's body. 'It's okay, Gee, you came and asked for help. '

The sun is starting to crawl in through the weave of the shitty curtains, to crawl up the lightening sky, and Gerard can finally close his eyes, and start to come down.


End file.
